I took advantage of the time these repairs took up to go and pay my respects to the President at Washington and thence to make a rapid dash into the West, in the footsteps of our ancient pioneers, and up to the farthest limits of civilisation (as they were then, in 1841).

The thing that strikes one most on arriving in the United States, and in New York in particular, as I have already said, is the extraordinary bustle that reigns everywhere, and which really stuns one at first.  One feels so bewildered that any idea of a picturesque description disappears.  The only thing one is aware of is bustle.  Bustle on land, where everybody seems to rush as if they were demented—­bustle on the water, where one keeps wondering why the ships of all sizes passing at full speed in every direction do not collide every other minute.  In complete contrast to our boulevards, Broadway, when you walk along it, does not seem to contain a single idler.  Are there any idle men in America?  Yes, there are some millionaires, who pull up when they have made their fortunes.  Their fellow-citizens assert that they are always ill at ease, amidst the general activity, and that they go and settle down in their idleness in Paris, among people like themselves, whose frivolity they end by copying.  They are looked upon as “demoralised Americans.”  But they are few in number.  As each man has only himself to reckon on, as he has no hoped-for inheritance to wait for and discount in idleness, seeing the man in possession owes nothing to his children, nor to anybody else, and is free to dispose of his property as he chooses, everybody being free to make his will as he likes, so each man feels that if he wants to get on he must work.  And is not this the chief cause of the vigour and energy of the great American nation?  If Broadway is a tumult of business, that in the port of New York is worth seeing too.  This port is at the confluence of two arms of the sea, in front of the public walk called the Battery.  Here, towards five o’clock in the evening, when the steamboats start, the huge floating palaces may be seen shooting off in every direction, shrieking hoarsely.  It is a maritime pandemonium.  In it the American is in his element.  Dressed in black, with a stove-pipe hat, the quid in his cheek causing him to look as though he grinned sardonically, with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the engine-room bell, he drives his ship full speed through the throng with an audacity, decision, and coolness which made me shiver at first!

In this manner I left New York and passed along the coast of New Jersey on my way to Washington, but not without receiving a very friendly welcome from the naval officer commanding there, Commodore Perry, a remarkable man, who, half by persuasion and half by force, concluded the first treaty with Japan, thus opening up that interesting country—­I will not say to civilisation (for I do not know that Japan has progressed on that account), but to trade, and intercourse with nations of European origin.